Call it serendipity! Attached is a note I sent to
Keith Ford just yesterday afternoon. His reply was, in
what is becoming the newest buzz word, appropriately
enough in an election year, disingenuous.
Where to begin?
Little things like City Center is failing according to
critics blaming the design,"which they say is too
suburban and inward-focused." What??
It fails by design because it is neither suburban nor
urban. It's hybrid. As for inward-looking that
doesn't seem to affect Mall of America which couldn't
be any more inward-looking if it tried.
If you look at both Gavidaes and City Center you will
see the one thing they share in common aside from
empty retail space; they all exist on half blocks and
have office towers adjoining them.
One thing that Robert de Balkany of LSGI fame said in
trial testimony struck me as so obviously sensible. He
talked about the linear approach of shopping in DT
Mpls and how it would never compete with suburban
malls.
That was the entire basis for the three-plus block
project they had proposed on Nicollet. He knew that
the ideas Brookfield, Robert Dayton, and Target CEO
Steven Watson were foisting on Minneapolis would never
succeed.
Understand that I am not making a pitch for LSGI. The
past is the past. We can learn a few things from the
debacle.
At one point in the LSGI development process they
bagan talking about an office tower whereas at the
beginning of the process there was none. It became an
essential element of their proposal if they were to
succeed financially given the design constraints the
city council and mayor were putting on the project.
Now scan back to Brookfield's developments. They all
have office components though in the case of Norwest,
now Wells Fargo, I am not sure how that came down. The
real prize in these deals are the office towers which
in the case of Dain Rauscher and Multifoods Tower the
boys from Brookfield own outright.
Now in the city of Mpls. it is verboten to issue TIF
for office buildings so the smart thing to do is
propose a piece of crap retail space as adjunct to get
finances to enable you to get more finances to build
office towers mortgaged by other lenders who will be
paid off and leave you with a pot of gold while
schlubs like MCDA hold unsecured loans or mortgages on
shopping centers that nobody wants.
In an unguarded moment years ago Don Fraser was to
heard to say to a class at the U.ofM. architecture
school his belief that you couldn't trust a developer.
Personally, I think his proscription is way too
narrow. I would put a few more professions in the
untrustworthy category. Hey we all have self-interest.
But....
I will stop my public criticism at this point and read
Steve Minn's screed instead. I got as far as the shiny
spot in his forehead before I came back to finish
this. At the same time, I think Councilman Ostrow's
call to avoid criticism is, for lack of a better word
and I hate to do this people, disingenuous. Seems to
be a lot of that going around these days!
Cheers! Have a nice weekend.
Your progressively persnickety pamphleteer,
Tim Connolly
Ward 7
Note: forwarded message attached.
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